


Before A Tide: A tale of the fifth blight

by Cadogan



Series: Before the Inquisition [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Chantry, Cousland Backstory, F/M, Ferelden, Ferelden Civil War, Fifth Blight, Gen, Grey Wardens, Highever, Howes vs Couslands, Prequel, Templar Order
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2018-12-26 02:37:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12049548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cadogan/pseuds/Cadogan
Summary: Highever is ravaged by civil war, flooded with refugees and shaken by rumours of the blight. For Isehris, once a grey warden of the Free Marches, now a fugitive, it may seem like the last place she should run to. For Ruan, a young man in disgrace, it may seem like a place to find redemption in a noble cause. Both will find that nothing is so simple as the tide rises around them.





	1. Whispers

Isehris stood in the darkness and wore it like a shroud, watching and waiting. People walked past her, some close enough that she could have reached out to touch them. None of them saw her. None of them looked. There had been a place like this in Hasmal, when she was a child. In fact, there probably places like this in every city across Thedas, but Isehris was thinking of just one. It had been a small space between the buttress of the city wall and the building that rested up against it. The shadows fell there at all times of the day. Very like the place where she now stood, a grown woman and no longer a child. She could stand there and watch the door of a tavern. It was a busy place, the first part of the city that many visitors to Highever would see, an excellent place for a tavern.

Her childhood in Hasmal had been filled with fear. Yet that shadowy alcove by the city walls had been a special place of terror. A small echo of that terror fluttered somewhere inside Isehris now. If she allowed herself, she could remember the way her bare feet had been simultaneously numb and stinging as she ran through the streets, desperately looking for somewhere to hide; the way her heart thumped in her throat and the way she just could not quiet her breathing no matter how hard she tried. She had scrambled into the dark corner and crouched low as the watchmen came chasing. She had hugged her knees tightly as they stopped by the gates and looked around, arguing about which way she had gone. She could plainly see their eyes casting around. “Don’t look at me… don’t look at me…” she had murmured under her breath as if she was talking to them. She whispered to them and to herself until she couldn’t tell whether the whisper came from her any more. They hadn’t looked at her, and they had moved on. 

Isehris was no longer a child, she was no longer crouching and she would not be afraid. She didn’t speak the whispers to herself any more, either, but she heard them. They were always there, just on the edge of silence, and they swelled as people passed. 

Two sailors strode by and then turned into the tavern. Warm air touched Isehris’ face with the smell of ale and cooking. Absurdly, it occurred to her that she had never been inside that tavern back in Hasmal, no matter how many nights she had spent lurking in the shadows outside it. Mauro had insisted on it, especially after he knew how well Isehris could hide. ‘Runner’ Mauro worked for one of the many gangs operating in Hasmal’s slums. His job had been to ‘run’ the urchin pickpockets that came under their wing. The spot by the walls had been too ripe with rich pickings to allow Isehris to avoid it. Drinkers went in with full purses, and some gamblers came out with them. Most were merry and unwary. 

As she stood and waited she did her best to recall the old routine. It was all about choosing the right mark and the right time. Moments after the first two sailors passed, a group of five more appeared through the gates. One of them was talking loudly and the others were laughing as they ambled towards the door of the tavern; merry and unwary. She found herself instinctively measuring the distance between her and the shemlen. She felt, rather than thought about, the moment when it was just right for her to take three long, smooth strides to walk behind them. As she fell in with them the whispers grew until she heard them as a constant murmur. They soothed her that it would be alright. No-one would notice her. She was safe. They whispered that she was just another member of this group, just one of them. There was no need to look around. Isehris’ eyes darted between the sailors and her body started to mimic their gait, their pace, the way that they held themselves. It would have been so easy to cut a purse and stride away before any of them noticed. She realised that she had already noticed the fat leather pouch on the hip of a man to her left. Old habits were never really forgotten. 

Instead, she walked with them as they went in through the tavern door. Despite herself, she felt a moment of trepidation as the first man went through. Being out on the streets beyond the alienage after curfew would earn you a beating. Sneaking into shemlen homes would get you killed. Yet none of them wanted to pay any heed to the cool darkness behind them as they entered the welcoming warmth of the tavern. There was no need to push or deflect as she followed them in. All she had to do was stay quiet and slip aside of the door as it swung closed. 

The common room was a large one. A long bar ran along one of the walls, opposite a large hearth where a fire glowed, throwing light around the room. Wood-panelled booths enclosed a row of tables along the wall opposite the door. At least ten round tables were spread between the wooden pillars which stood at regular intervals to support the ceiling. Those nearest the hearth were filled with people. The whispers in Isehris’ ear buzzed as attention turned towards the door. She deftly glided into the shade behind a pillar and waited, focusing on the surface of the wood against her hand. Then she slowly backed up into the corner of the room, furthest from the light and warmth of the fire. There was little reason for anyone to look over in that direction. With a slow, deliberate breath she let go of a little of the tension in her body. The hissing whispers receded to the edges of her mind. 

From her new vantage point she could observe every part of the common room, and see all that came and went. She knew the man she was seeking. She knew that he would be here tonight. What she didn’t have was the faintest idea of what he looked like. She watched the men she had followed in join the others by the fire. One clasped hands with another in an aggressive show of affection, while another moved over to what seemed to be an empty space on a bench closest to the fire. As he went to sit down he suddenly jumped up into the air and staggered away as a large ginger cat lashed out, arched its back and hissed at him. The others laughed uproariously. “That seat’s taken, mate. She always sits there!” one shouted. 

The tavern was half empty. A place so close to the docks of a city should have been full of different people and different accents. All the voices here were Ferelden. That made some sense. Highever’s docks were as empty as this tavern. She had waited for weeks for a ship sailing from the Free Marches to Highever before she had finally settled for a crossing to Amaranthine and a walk overland. Most of the men here came from the five sleek warships standing at the docks. Some of them still wore their leather armour, stamped with the device of a bear on their chests. 

As time passed and her mind cleared she began to pick out notes in the cacophony of conversations. There were stories of sexual conquests and fishing catches (both accompanied with hand gestures), complaints about officers, jokes at each other’s expense and lots of rumours. They were easy, comfortable exchanges that she had overheard a thousand times before, like the beats of a familiar song. When you knew the rhythm you could pick out how each individual instrument played along in turn. So, too, with the players in the conversation. Isehris watched each of them and saw their part in the piece. This one always leaning forward, hands always moving like a conductor. These others jumping in on his cues, playing off his theme. These two raising their pitch each time the other spoke.This one quiet, just nodding along to the beat. It was a game she had played many times before as she had watched from the shadows. It gave her a measure of each one. 

The minutes swam past, and eventually the door swung open again. An older man with a stick and greying beard strode in. He was wearing old, simple clothes that looked well cared for, and he made his way towards the fireplace with a metronomic tap of his stick on the floorboards. When his path was obstructed by the wide back of a leather-clad sailor, he tapped the man on the ankle. “Gangway, boy.” he said in an expectant tone. The big sailor turned and looked down incredulously. As Isehris watched she couldn’t decide whether the big sailor had stepped back before or after the old man had started his tick-tock steps through the space where he had been. Confidence was its own kind of magic. The big man stepped backwards into another and sloshed his drink down his front. “Have a care, grandfather.” he complained.  
The old man reached the fireside bench where the cat sat and tapped his stick on the floor. The big cat looked up, slunk down off the bench and then leapt up into the old man’s lap as he sat down. “I’m not your grandfather as far as I know, boy. Though I can’t swear to it.” he groaned as he stretched out his leg and stroked the cat. 

Isehris was looking for a regular, but she was more or less sure that this was not the man. He had attracted the attention of everyone in the tavern, for a start. She very much doubted that the man she was looking for would do that. “Don’t mind old Wallace” said a man playing cards at a table a few feet away from the hearth, “He’s virtually part of the furniture.”  
“I see you in here often enough, Mackie.” retorted the old man, apparently named Wallace. “You can make up for your lack of respect for your elders by fetching the beverage that the fine lady of the house no doubt has ready for me at the bar.”  
The card player, Mackie, shared a wry look with the barkeeper, a tall woman with a hard, weathered face and grey stubble for hair. Her thick arms were richly decorated with colourful tattoos. She placed an already filled tankard on the bar and nodded wordlessly. Mackie rose from his seat to fetch it, before walking over to the man with the cat and putting it down at the table beside him. “There you are, your lordship.”  
“That’s better. You are forgiven.” replied Wallace. Isehris was certain now that he was not that man she was seeking. 

It took perhaps half an hour of waiting and watching for her to begin to doubt her judgement. He should be here at this tavern tonight. She had been assured that she would find him here. She had been told that he would be discreet. Yet so far the only one that stood out from the warship crews was ‘Old Wallace’. Isehris was beginning to plan, with a sinking heart, how to approach him without being noticed when the door opened again. A very different kind of man walked in. He was clean shaven and of average build. He wore a short cloak that buttoned across his chest and a peaked hat that covered his hair. He took in the gathering of sailors without interest. Then he turned over to the dark corner where Isehris stood. Unlike the others, he looked, his eyes scanning around the room from top to bottom. Isehris kept her gaze low, only watching him from the corner of her eye. Attention is a two way street and her weaving would not protect her if she focused on him too directly. The whispers rose and she gave them shape with her thoughts. ‘You can’t see me. You will look right past me.’

He looked right past her, but he cast another glance back over his shoulder as he walked to the bar. She held her ground and his gaze glided over her again. Only when his back was turned did she lift her eyes to watch as he went straight to the bar and laid a handful of gold coins on the counter. The barkeeper took the coins and gave him in return a bowl of thick stew, a bottle and a leather document case. He took these with him to a booth in the opposite corner of the room. Sitting with his back to the wall, he uncorked the bottle and took a sip, took out a document and started to read quietly. She had found her man. 

She was about to approach him when something in the hubub of conversations caught at her consciousness. “It was that grey warden. They were seen!” Without thinking she froze to the spot and summoned the whispers to bring her weavings back into place, hoping it was not too late to hide her from view. All the other voices in the room drained away as she focused on the group of men sitting around a table near the fireplace. To her relief, none of them were looking at her. “No. It was demons, I heard.” said someone, a different man to the first that had spoken.  
“Well of course, demons!” retorted the first speaker, “Why do you think they put all the mages out there on an island? They summoned a whole army of demons and killed half of the templars.” he continued, leaning in over his ale, “That’s why no-one heard anything from Kinloch since Ostagar.”  
“Maker, the whole world is falling apart.” a third man shook his head in disbelief.  
“See now, that’s where the story gets better” continued the man leaning enthusiastically over his drink. “I heard that the grey wardens arrived, flew in on griffons to land on top of the tower, killed the demons and led the templars off South to fight the darkspawn.” Isehris noticed the other sailors turning their attention towards the storyteller and he was getting louder to match his audience, moving his hands to illustrate his tale. 

“That’s not how I heard it.” called a man leaning by the hearth. “I heard that it was the mages what marched South.”  
“Weren’t you listening? They were all possessed and turned into monsters.” the storyteller replied.  
“There aren’t any griffons around any more either.” jeered the man by the hearth.  
“That’s what they said about dragons, isn’t it? If there’s no truth in it then why have Howe and the Regent got a bee up their arse over these grey wardens?”  
“Yeah. I heard that the grey wardens were in Redcliffe. That’s how they fought off the darkspawn down here.” Another, different man at the other edge of the chimed in.  
“I heard that the grey wardens killed the King too, so what you heard can crawl up my arse.” yet another man shouted raucously.  
The old man, Wallace, tapped his stick on the floor as if to announce himself before he spoke. “I know why Howe is worried about the warden.” he said with a half-smile perking his whiskers. “He knows they’re coming here for him, because I heard that the grey warden is young Lord Fergus himself. He led his troops out of the wilds and now he’s marching back home with Arl Eamon and the templars with him.”

There was a moment of stunned quiet before someone spoke up. “You’re drunk, old man. The Couslands are all dead.”  
“The Couslands ain’t dead as long as their name is on that castle.” Wallace waved his cane at the wall in what might have been the direction of the castle.  
“Names change. No-one’s coming back from Ostagar.” the big sailor growled.  
“What would you know about it, boy?”  
“I know a damn sight more than a cripple would.”  
Wallace creaked up to stand straight. The cat leapt down from his lap. “I got this wound from a chevalier at the Battle of Denerim, you arrogant little pup.” he tapped his leg with his stick before stabbing it at the big man. “I saw that bastard over the side and into the sea for my trouble, so I won’t be disrespected by an Amaranthine thug.”  
A sailor from the card table got up and put himself between Wallace and the big man. “Leave him, he’s just a harmless old man.”  
“Harmless, am I?” Wallace pushed his stick into the card player’s back. “You’ve heard me tell the story of Denerim Harbour often enough, Mackie,” he said as he glared indignantly at the card player, “but maybe I should tell it again. There were plenty of our turncoats working on the enemy’s boats then, too.”  
Mackie bunched his fists and stepped towards Wallace, “You take that back, old man.”  
He was interrupted by a loud, ringing clang from the bar. Everyone turned over to the tattooed tavern keeper, who brandished a long wooden club at them. “Anyone who makes any more trouble tonight is getting seen out, and not politely. Wallace, you can sit down and shut up, or you can leave. Just because you’re a regular doesn’t mean I won’t bar you if you keep stirring. Clear?”  
There was a murmur of acceptance from the sailors and Isehris relaxed a little. The one called Mackie glared at the old man and nodded to the big man, leading him away and over to the card table. Wallace stayed standing, fuming silently. After a few moments he strode off to the door muttering something about disrespect, slamming the tavern door on his way out. 

Across the room the quiet man in the buttoned cloak, who had been quietly watching the scene just as she had, went back to his stew and his letters. Isehris waited until the tavern keeper turned away to walk past the bar. Then she slipped into the booth and carefully sat on the bench opposite quiet man. The creak of the wood made him look up. Isehris met his eye and saw the familiar moment of surprise as he noticed her. “Are you Reid?”  
He blinked and looked around him, perhaps checking to see if there anything else about his surroundings that he had missed. “Who are you?” he replied without answering.  
“Someone who was told that I could meet the representative of a discrete guild of like-minded people in this tavern.”  
His eyes narrowed at her, “And who told you this?”  
“Anton Muret, of Ostwick. Am I in the right place.”  
At that he set down his spoon and leaned back on his bench. “Are you a templar?” suddenly he was checking the rest of the room, especially the exit. Now Isehris was certain that she was in the right place. She was surprised by the warm rush of relief that washed over her. “I’m a mage.” she reassured him, and pulled down her hood, showing him that she was an elf. There were no elf templars. He relaxed a little, at least enough to look less like he was about to hurl a fireball at her. Still, he looked wary.  
“What is it that you want?”  
“I want to find the Mages’ Collective.” he flinched as Isehris spoke the name aloud, compulsively checking around the room once again. “You know that they are more likely to look over here if you keep doing that.” Isehris said. She had her back to the rest of the common room, but she was hidden behind the panel of the booth. Reid was still visible to some. He stopped his furtive glances and looked her in the eye. “Did you know that Muret has been taken by the Chantry? He has already given up some of our number to them. You will have to excuse me if sneaking up on me and invoking his name makes me a little nervous.”

“That had nothing to do with me.” Isehris was almost sure that this was mostly true.  
“Maybe so, but if he told you were to find me then who else has he told? For all we know he could have given us both up.” Reid looked ruefully at his stew and ale, then up at Isehris, “Dammit I liked this place… Don’t contact me again.”  
He started to rise. Isehris’ hand shot out to grab his. “Wait.” she hissed. “I was very careful. I know that I wasn’t followed.”  
He tugged his hand away, but he looked surprised at the strength of Isehris grip. “Let me go.” he growled.  
“Think about it,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “Muret was taken weeks ago. If he informed on you they would have come for you already.”  
Reid was only partly mollified, “How can you be sure that you weren’t followed?”  
“You didn’t see me did you? You walked straight past me. No-one else saw me either. I would have known if they did.”  
He sat back down, slowly. “Who are you?”  
This was better. This was progress. “My name is Isehris.”  
“You’re a Marcher?” he looked her over speculatively, “Which Circle did you escape from? Ostwick? Starkhaven? It can’t be the Gallows. You would never have made it this far.”  
“You don’t know what I’m capable of.” she retorted, “Anyway, I didn’t escape. I was conscripted. I’m a grey warden.”  
Reid raised an eyebrow. “Are you the one they were talking about?”  
Isehris hesitated before answering, “No.”  
“Are there more wardens coming from the Marches?”  
Isheris shook her head and quickly changed the subject. “I need to stay hidden, and I need to make contact with the Collective.”  
Reid leaned back against the wall and folded his arms. “You saw how much trouble comes with wardens. We already have enough to worry about from Arl Howe without hiding something he wants.We aren’t a free sanctuary for waifs and strays.”  
Isehris gritted her teeth. She had seen that dismissive look on the face of too many like him. She had told him that she was a grey warden, but all he saw was an elf girl. She was not a frightened child anymore. She would make him see that.

“I am not a waif or a stray!” Her voice reverberated inside her skull as her words came through her clenched teeth. Though she thought she heard a rumbling echo speak the words with the rage she felt underneath her indignation. Reid tilted his head. Had he heard it too? No, Isehris decided. He was probably just surprised to be challenged by an elf. She needed to calm down. She needed this man’s help. She took a deep breath. “Listen. I can look after myself. I’m not a recruit or an apprentice, I’m a full warden battlemage. I’ve seen the deep roads. I have knowledge and skills to share. All I need is a place to lie low and some…” she paused. She could not sound too desperate, “Some assistance in my research.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “You say that you can come and go without being seen?”  
“I can.”  
“Then maybe I can help you. It won’t be easy getting out of Highever, and you mustn’t be found. Come and see me again here in a week’s time. Then I might have something for you.”

There was no point in saying anything further. Isehris pulled up her hood and slipped out of the booth. As the hood covered her head she felt her posture change. It happened without a thought. Her chin and her shoulders dropped. Her arms hung at her sides and allowed the folds of the cloak envelop her. The sounds of the tavern were muffled and the faint rush of distant voices became louder. She first moved into the shadows in the corner of the room, the place had become quieter and more watchful since Wallace’s quarrel. Though she had been here for over an hour her skin was suddenly crawling to be gone. Her mission was completed and she had no business being here. Still, she forced herself to move slowly. Her head was down and she watched the others from the corner of her eye. Step by agonising step, the door moved closer. She was five or six paces from it when it burst open with a bang. Her heart leapt into her as a troop of six soldiers stamped noisily into the room towards her.

The commotion was like a tidal wave inside her weavings. The sounds of the material world diffused into thudding echo and the forms of the room around her blurred and rocked. Isehris could see the shape of a soldier moving straight towards her, but she could not tell how much was caused by the shemlen walking and how much by the distortion of her own vision. ‘Stay calm’ she told herself silently, ‘It is just an entropic feedback in the weaving working on my own senses. Everything is still where it was’. She closed her eyes and stepped to the side. Her hand found the rough wooden pillar. She stepped up against it and opened her eyes to watch the refracting shape of the soldier passing her. She blinked. The swimming vision cleared and the shapes resolved into men in mail. Each of them carried a shield emblazoned with the device of a bear. They sauntered around the common room, none of them looking her direction. The tavern patrons were all looking down into their drinks or their cards. Only Reid was glancing in her direction, but was casting his eyes around as if he was searching and could not find her. 

She leaned back against the pillar and her hands found a grip on it. It felt very solid and very reassuring. “Now. Move now.” she whispered to herself, then forced her arms to push off. It was only seven steps to the door. The temptation to look over her shoulder was overwhelming. ‘Just keep moving’. Three steps. She could imagine eyes looking at her back. She could hear a voice shouting “Stop! Thief!” It was as vivid as it had been when she had been eight years old and had heard it in reality. The cold flash of panic was almost as real too. Her hand reached out in front of her to open the door. It felt as though it belonged to someone else. Slowly. Don’t rush. She carefully pushed the door open enough to slide out into the cold night air. 

When it closed behind her she felt the impulse to run. It made her whole body shiver with tension to resist that impulse. She was not a frightened child any more. She was a warden. She had walked in the deep roads. Why did these streets dredge up fears that she had almost forgotten she had? One foot in front of the other, nice and slow. She dropped her head and watched her feet. The cloak around her barely moved as she walked. That was good. ‘I am not here. I am not even a breeze.’ she thought to herself and to the world. “Forming a thought makes it real inside the weaving.” Isehris could hear her teacher’s excited, urgent voice reminding her. That summoned a bitter lump of anger in her belly. That was good too. Anger had always made her forget her fear. “I am not a child.” rumbled a voice on the edge of her hearing. 

Isheris passed through the gatehouse. The moon was reflected in the ripples of the sea behind the masts of the ships and the waterfront was wide and open. No-one was out on the docks at this time of the night, and Isehris did not have far to go. Past the warships there was a row of warehouses. They were so close, but she was moving so achingly slow. Her breath was loud in her ears as it misted in front of her. Her muscles flexed of their own accord and her cloak now shivered around her as she stepped. “There’s no-one here to see me. I could let the weaving go and run.” She said it aloud in an attempt to convince herself, but a hundred voices whispered ‘No’. Safe here. Hidden here. No-one will see.

When she reached the side door of the warehouse all she could hear was the chattering, drowning out the sound of the waves. Her hands reached out of the cloak at took hold of the lock. She looked at it and remembered that she had locked it back into place when she had left. How long ago had it been? “I need to hex this.” Saying things aloud helped her to keep hold of her own thoughts. The hex was simple entropic working. She closed her eyes and imagined the padlock slipping open, and pulled. As she did she felt the thing crumble into fragments of rust which poured down her hand. They were strangely hypnotic as they fell like snow to the cobbles. Isehris stared at her hand and thought about what to do next. She shook herself. “Open the door and go inside.” She pushed the door open and the rusty hinges screeched. Once inside she pushed it closed again. For a while she just leaned on the door with her eyes closed. She pushed her hood back off her head and rested her cheek on the wood. She took a breath and felt it fill her chest. She let it go and felt it pass out of her mouth. There was no-one here. She was alone. The voices became a little quieter. 

The warehouse was stacked with bales of wool. There were rows of them piled high to the rafters. Isehris took another deep breath and moved her hand to the nearest one. She counted them off as she walked along the rows. She found that she could remember exactly the right number. Her mind calmed as she got nearer to the right place. Somewhere at the back of the warehouse she had pulled away several bales to make steps. Climbing them she found her way up, over and into the hollow she had made for herself amongst the stacked fleeces. She dropped down and picked up the loose bale to put it back into the gap she had come through. She breathed a sigh of relief as she closed the wall of her sanctuary. Here she had a little haven filled with all things she owned in the world. It wasn’t much, but the floor wasn’t hard and the roof didn’t leak. Certainly Isehris had slept in far worse places in her life. It was luxurious compared to the tiny coffin-space where she had stowed herself away on the crossing from Ostwick. She could not remember the last time she had slept as comfortably as she had for the last few nights. 

She sat down in her fleece-lined fortress, far from the eyes of other people, and leaned her back against a bale with her legs folded underneath her, just breathing and allowing herself to feel the solidity of the packed fleeces beneath her, the rough hessian against the back of her neck, the pull in her chest as she breathed in. As she listened to the silence the voices still whispered to her. “Don’t try to fight them. Just focus on the real and let them pass through you.” said her teacher’s voice. She let that voice pass away too. She was no longer a child. She didn’t need a teacher any more. She didn’t need any of them. All she wanted was to be left alone and her freedom, and she would take what she wanted for herself.


	2. The Causeway

Ruan could see a building burning on the Western horizon, where the dull grey sky had been painted blood red by the setting sun. Against it blazed a fierce point of light and a thin trail of black smoke. He didn't have long to ponder what those distant flames were consuming, however. “Hold the line!” The order came to him across a din of shouting and the clatter of blows against his shield. He braced and dug his heels into the gaps between the slick, wet cobblestones. His tall shield interlocked with those to the left and right. The shield wall flexed and held against the bodies surging onto it.

“Push!” Came another order, and they obeyed as one. Ruan leaned his weight into his shield arm and pushed off from the stones. The bodies clamouring against the shield wall were thrown back by the sudden surge. Several of the attackers tumbled over the edge of the causeway and into the cold, forbidding water. There was a howl of dismay as they staggered back, but they held their ground. In front of them a man no older than Ruan had fallen onto the slippery ground. He was writhing in pain as he clutched his head. Blood was diluting into the salt water between the cobbles where he had fallen. Suddenly something struck Ruan on the head, jolting it to the side. The ringing inside the cylindrical helm was muffled by the cloth padding. “Get your shield up, Trevelyan!” Came a shouted order. He did so, just in time to block another hurled cobblestone. “Animals!” The attackers shouted at them as they tore up loose causeway stones and threw them. “You're starving us!” Ruan kept his head down as they thumped heavily onto his shield. 

He glanced back over his shoulder. Behind him the causeway stretched away into the water, like a floating road, leading to a small island. The Hermitage was little more than a steep hill that rose out of the grey sea against the grey sky. It was crowned by the tower of a large chantry, and that was surrounded with a ring of outbuildings and a wall. At one time ‘The Hermitage’ had been home to a true hermit, a holy woman of the Exalted Age who was famed for speaking to the eals and the gulls and healing the sick. Now, however, it was the abode of a religious community of several dozen chantry brethren. Soon enough the tide would rise to drown the causeway and make the Hermitage a true island once again. One way or another, Ruan knew, this drama would be resolved by then.

He looked over at the one who had been calling the orders. The Knight-captain, standing behind the shield wall, was marked out by the spiked peak atop her helm. She was glancing down at the rising water too. “Batons!” She called out. Ruan hesitated, but then he reached for the long wooden baton at his belt, along with the others in the shield wall. “You are ordered to disperse immediately. This is your final warning!” The knight-captain shouted above the din. A moment later she had to dodge out of the way of a stone. The crowd was not backing away, nor did their shouts and jeers lessen. “Advance!” Called the captain.

The line advanced. From inside the helm Ruan’s field of vision was narrowed to a slit and the din was overlaid by the more immediate sound of his own breathing. The people in front of him wore no armour, only ragged, patched clothing. A few carried axes or other farm implements, but most were unarmed except for pieces of wood or cobblestones. They were all soaked to the bone, most of them gaunt. At first they backed away from the advancing shield wall, but then they bunched up against those pressing in from behind. A man to Ruan’s left rushed the shields alone. There was a crack as a baton struck him on the head. Then the crowd rushed again. 

Ruan braced as a big man lifted what looked like a broken fence post high above his head and brought it down on his shield. The big man was wild-eyed and grimacing, screaming obscenities as he lifted the fence post again. It left him wide open. It would have been easy for Ruan to swing his baton and strike a blow on the man’s temple that would have dropped him straight away. Instead, Ruan ducked behind his shield and took the second impact, then he pulled the shield back and drove the end of the baton hard into the man’s belly. As he doubled over Ruan stepped forward out of the line and pushed into his attacker with his shield. The big man overbalanced into the people behind him. Now the ragged crowd was huddled so close together that most of them could not raise their arms. The Templar shield wall advanced remorselessly and Ruan could hear the crack of wood against bodies. At the edge of the causeway more people toppled over into the deep water and flailed in the waves. The crowd started to retreat. Suddenly the pressure on his shield was lifted.

They kept advancing with their batons brandished as the mob backed off. Along the way they picked up men who had been battered into senselessness and paused to fish some of the rioters out of the water. The sodden and shivering unfortunates were pushed ahead of them along the causeway or lifted onto shields to be carried by knights in the second rank. The water was lapping above their ankles as they climbed an incline in the causeway to a raised platform. It was flanked by two obelisks of granite, both carved into stylised renderings of human warriors. There the Templar shield wall halted. 

Ruan pulled off his helm and watched the mob dissolve into gaggles of listless, defeated people. He looked at the wooden baton in his right hand, then at the granite warrior towering beside him. It carried a weapon and shield, too. The features of his face, carved in minimalist lines, gave him a fierce implacability. There was an outline of a sunburst on his shield, much like the one emblazoned on Ruan’s. The Chantry’s histories named the granite warriors as representatives of Havard, the revered bodyguard of Andraste; Havard the steadfast; Havard the Aegis; Havard the guardian of the faithful. Ruan wondered what he would have made of this scene, where the champions of the just beat the faithful away with a stick.

It had all been very different, and so much simpler, back home. There they had been calling in the faithful with bells and chants from far and wide. Ostwick’s great cathedral couldn’t even hold them all. Each day the procession had already been lining the square at dawn; scores upon scores of pilgrims greeting the sun with prayers as they awaited the opening of the cathedral gates. The hum of their voices could be heard even through the thick oak of those gates. Ruan had waited there every morning for a month, and each morning the pilgrims had gathered. While he waited Ruan had stood looking up at the great rose window, set high above the fires of the holy brazier at the far end of the cathedral. The sun had been rising behind that window, gradually lifting the cathedral out of darkness. When it had finally filled the window its light had streamed in through the stained glass, tinted into a rainbow of colours.

It was the signal that Ruan had been waiting for. He and three other men in the same plain robes worked as one to haul the gates open, and let the pilgrims into the light. They had come blinking upwards in reverence and awe as the chapters began their song. They spoke in hushed whispers and a kaleidoscope of tongues. There were accents of Markham and Kirkwall and Starkhaven. Dialects of Nevarra and Antiva and Rivain. Several times he had heard words he thought he recognised as Tevene. All of them wore the same small pewter badge. It was the shape of a ship with a sunburst in place of a sail. Many had carried a single gold coin and a small scroll. Some had fumbled with them nervously, some pressed the scroll or the coin to their lips as they mumbled a prayer. Even those that did not show them would have had both tucked away somewhere safe, for that was why they had come to Ostwick. Ostwick; which proclaimed itself as the place where Andraste and Maferath’s hosts had first landed on their quest to bring freedom and light were once had been slavery and darkness. Ostwick; the port through which all those must pass who wished to cross the Waking Sea and follow the pilgrim’s path to Andraste’s birthplace. The chanters had sung the pilgrim’s thoughts aloud.

“All sins are forgiven! All crimes pardoned!  
Let no soul harbour guilt! Let no soul hunger for justice!  
By the Maker’s will I decree harmony in all things.  
Let balance be restored…”

“And the world given eternal life.” The procession had echoed the final line of the verse in their own harmony. There were great urns beside the holy brazier and each pilgrim had dropped a gold coin into one of them before they dropped their prayer scroll into the fire. Once they had passed the great fire most pilgrims fell into silent prayer and followed the train back down the aisle to be spilled back out into the square, a little lighter of their sins and of their gold. 

Ruan had watched the scene play out often enough over the previous month, and his part in it had been done for another day, so he slipped quietly away into the cloisters to find the cell that had been his home during that time. It was a small, bare room, with a bed, a table, a stool and a statue of Andraste standing in a small alcove. Usually Ruan had been returning to the company of only a small collection of books. On that day, however, he had found a long-legged man with dark skin and a beard that had been trimmed just enough to look effortlessly elegant rather than ragged and unkempt. He had been sitting on Ruan’s bed with his feet up on a chest. “Roon! There you are.” Conrad Evenrig greeted him as he frowned into one of Ruan’s books. “Are you having trouble sleeping? Because this thing you are reading seems like the perfect remedy.”

“Not exactly.” Ruan replied. He had been having trouble sleeping, but he saw no reason for Conrad to know that. “What brings you here, my Lord?”  
Conrad had pulled a face, “My Lord? You’ve been living in a chantry for weeks, not years, Roon. They shouldn’t have got to you yet. I mean, Maker’s Breath, man, you’re even dressed like one of them. I’m going to have to get you out of here before it's too late for you.”  
“I think that ship has already sailed, Conrad.”  
“Naysayer! You and your sister have been nagging me to put a properly respectable household together for years, and now that I am finally trying to you have both abandoned me… Come on, Roon! I need knights in my service, people that I can trust.”

Ruan had raised his eyebrow at that. Tamsyn, he knew, would have done far worse, “I’m not a knight… And I am sure that there is no shortage of those who have been knighted who would be clamouring to join the household of someone as eminent as you, Bann Evenrig.”

Conrad had sighed and shook his head. “I was afraid you’d say that. You Trevelyans might have the horse as your badge, but you’re all pig-headed.” He tapped at the boar embroidered on his sleeve, the badge of his own house, then jumped up from the bed and tapped the chest with his foot. “I brought you this. You left it in my city estate before all of the trouble and I thought you might want it before I left for Ferelden.”

Ruan had recognised the chest then. He forced a smile. “Thank you, Conrad.”

Conrad nodded, then shook his head one more time as he looked at Ruan. He slapped him on the shoulder as he left. Left alone, Ruan had sat on the bed and stared at the chest without opening it for several long minutes. Then he shook himself back to his feet. There were so many things to be done in those last few days before the pilgrims sailed. He picked up a long scroll from the table and went back out into the cloisters. The door to the revered mother’s study was at the top of a short flight of steps, and had been open. Inside was a bright, airy room with a high, vaulted ceiling and large south-facing windows. There were two desks. At the closer of the two sat a woman who was not much older than Ruan. She wore the vestments of a chantry sister and a deep furrow in her brow. She had been resting her cheek on a bunched fist as she glared down at a jumble of papers. Her cap was sitting on top of another, higher pile of papers and her coppery hair, bundled on top of her head, was exposed. 

“Room for one more?” Ruan asked her and held up his own scroll.  
Sister Tamsyn Trevelyan had lifted her head and given him the same look of suspicion she used to give her little brother when he handed her things in the garden as children.  
“What is it?” she asked.  
“A blessed morning to you too, Sister.” Ruan replied with a smile, “It’s the map.”  
Tamsyn sighed and massaged the furrow in her brow with the ball of her thumb. It didn’t get any shallower. “What map?”

“The only maps of the Ferelden Coastlands in our library were drawn back in the Blessed Age, before the Orlesian invasion.” Revered Mother Thelois voice was melodious, despite the crackle of age in it, and both Trevelyans had turned when she spoke. The leader of the Chantry in Ostwick was a slight woman with an old, worn face and sharp, shrewd eyes. “I asked your brother to make sure that they are not hopelessly out of date.” She stood, leaning her weight onto her stick as she held out her hand. “I shall take the map, young man. I think that our Tamsyn has her hands full.” Tamsyn had handed the scroll to the Revered Mother and watched as she unrolled it on her own desk. “You’ve made a whole new copy.” Thelois observed.  
Ruan shrugged, “I had time on my hands, and there were too many changes. The Orlesians built new castles and pulled down others, and many of the landholdings have changed hands several times since the invasion. It seemed a shame to scrawl on the original.”

Thelois traced the coastline with her bony finger, it had stopped as she came upon the place where Ruan had marked the Hermitage Island. “Did you make sure to check the charters.” she asked.

“Yes, Your Reverence. The old charters were all renewed by King Maric when he took power. The island is forbidden to all who are not in service to the Chantry. As long as we land there no lord may make any claims.”  
“Good. It would be a great shame to spend all these pilgrims’ alms in making a gift to some Ferelden lord.” Thelois walked over to Tamsyn and patted her on the shoulder. “This is the third time that you have been through those papers, my dear. I think that you have done enough.”  
Tamsyn’s breath hissed out through her teeth. “Your Reverence, when I am over there…”  
“We shall manage.” Thelois had been ready to interrupt her. “I do have some people here who can follow instructions, especially ones as thorough as those you are leaving us. The ships are already being loaded and you will depart in the morning. You should have some faith in your sisters and be preparing yourself rather than the rest of us.”

Tamsyn opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. “Yes, Revered Mother.”

The Revered Mother had turned to Ruan, “Serah Trevelyan, will you make sure that your sister goes to her room immediately without attempting to load the ships by her herself?”  
“I shall do my best, Your Reverence.” Ruan replied. “Do I have your permission to knock her unconscious?”  
“Do what you must, Serah.” Thelois commanded and turned back to her window.  
Tamsyn, for her part, had glared at Ruan and snatched up her cap as she rose to her feet. “I can find my own way, Little Brother.” She bowed to the Revered Mother, and swept out of the room. 

In the end, the only way that Ruan had managed to get Tamsyn to her cell was by taking a detailed checklist from her and making a faithful promise to visit Ostwick’s docks himself and not to return until all items were accounted for. The rest of that afternoon was spent counting barrels of grain, salted fish and meat, sacks of clothing and blankets, tents, healing herbs and herds of livestock as they were hefted into the bellies of cargo ships by an army of longshoremen. He had made sure to report to Tamsyn with the list before he finally returned to his own room.

By then the cathedral had been ringing with the cadences of the Chant as the company of pilgrims sang to ask blessed Andraste to intercede with the Maker, as only she among His children could, to beg Him to look kindly upon this enterprise of mercy. From Ruan’s room it could be heard as a melodious murmur; indistinct yet familiar as a warm breeze. He was sitting quietly on his bed looking at the chest that Conrad had delivered. On the table in front of him sat the breastplate of the armour that had been inside, the etched designs of rearing stallions could be picked out clearest on the parts of the metal which he had polished, a job that was still only half finished. He wasn’t sure when he had stopped polishing or how long he had been staring blankly at the burnished stallion, listening to the faraway music. He had taken a leather thong from around his neck and wrapped it around his hand. From it swung an ivory ring, its two ends carved intricately into the shape of horses’ heads that matched the device on the armour.

He could remember the first time that he had seen that armour, and how proud and happy it had made him. It had arrived at his quarters in Val Royeaux with a letter from his father, carried by the armourers’ apprentice. It had been the first letter he had received from his father for three years, since his decision to leave the University, refuse a life in the chantry, and enroll in the Académie des Chevaliers. “We all make our choices. Wear yours well, my son.” Was all it had said. Bann Trevelyan was a taciturn man, even in his correspondence, but he said a lot with few words, and more with his actions. The gift had been extremely generous, and well timed. Ruan would have been able to wear it at his graduation as a chevalier, had he attended it. He had not. Nor had he ever worn the armour. His father had sent no more letters. Had it really been more than a year? For more than half of that time Ruan had been living on the hospitality of Conrad Evenrig, fearing the stern summons to return home. The only thing that had come from Bann Trevelyan was a deafening silence. If Ruan’s father said much with few words, his silences were positively eloquent. 

Another chest had been sitting under Ruan’s bed for weeks. He pushed his chair back from the table and pulled it out. As he opened it a Templar helm stared back up at him, lying on a matching scarlet sash and tabard. Its T-shaped visor was blank and anonymous. The steel shone like it had never been worn. The time had finally come. The templar guards did not move to stop him when he left his cell. He was wearing only a plain white smock and sandals. The cloisters had been quiet in the moonlight as he made his way into the cavernous space of the cathedral. He had passed ranks of worshippers until he came to the small chapel sheltered in the transept. Tamsyn and one of the Mothers who served the cathedral underneath Thelois had been waiting for him at the railing that marked the boundaries of the chapel. “Are you sure about this?” Tamsyn whispered to him as she stood beside him. He just nodded in reply. What did it really mean to be sure? To be sure was a choice, and he had been running from this choice for years. It had taken until then for him to know that there was nowhere to run to but places where he would find more doubts. He paced forward into the chapel. It was decorated only with a simple marble statue of Andraste, clasping a sword in both hands, her face lifted to the heavens. He had fallen to his knees before her and bowed his head. 

The Mother began to sing from the chant, and Ruan murmured the words along with her. They were words he had known how to recite by heart since childhood. Yet he had concentrated on every one of them now. He had to feel them. He had to believe them. He had to stop the chattering thoughts that threatened to rise to a roar and carry him away. It should have been enough. He remembered a time when those words burned like fire, when they could bring tears to his eyes and make his whole body and mind sing as one. Yet try as he might, his body felt heavy as lead, and his mind would not hold the words. They formed on his tongue and were gone just as quickly. 

When it was done the Mother bid him rise to his feet. She said “Go in peace, Brother.” and was an affirmed lay-brother of the chantry. He remembered being surprised that it was over, and he felt no different. He had walked alone back to his cell where two chantry brothers were waiting for him. Knowing what would come next he had knelt on the stone floor and bowed his head. One of the brothers stepped closer and laid a hand on his head. There was a gentle tug on his hair and the snick of shears and Ruan had watched the copper locks fall like autumn leaves around his knees. He closed his eyes and placed his hand on his breast. The ivory ring was still there, hanging from his neck on the leather thong. Had he forgotten to remove it or deliberately left it there? All at once he had found the words to hold onto. “We all make our choices. Wear yours well, my son.”

When it was done he was left alone. At least he thought he was alone, until he stood and found Tamsyn watching him quietly from the door. “It is usual for the Affirmed to wait a year before taking their full vows.” She had said, matter-of-factly. Ruan nodded in reply and sat down on the bed, numb. Tamsyn walked over to the table where the half-polished armour still lay and ran her fingers over the rearing stallion etching into the breastplate. “I have found that here you can be part of something. There is a lot that you can do, and you have options. The Revered Mother has spoken to the knight-commander and the templars will accept you. Though… she has been impressed with your work. She has suggested that you could be very useful serving as a cleric in the chapter house here.”

Ruan just stared at the locks of his hair scattered on the flagstones and ran his hand over his stubbled head. “I can’t stay here while you all go.” he said.

“Life as a templar involves a lot of hard choices, Ruan. It can be… harsh. Thelois is offering you her patronage. You could rise far with her help.”

“I have made my choice, Tamsyn.” he had cut her off with more of a snap in his voice than he intended and the part of him that still had room for such feeling had been sorry for that. She left without saying anything else, and for that he had been grateful. Some time after she was gone had risen and swept away his fallen hair along with all the broken pieces of the past. The next day was to bring a new beginning, and the start of their great mission to Ferelden.

So why did he keep reliving that night, over and over, even weeks later as sat beneath the rough granite face of Havard?  
“Maes, take Cooper and Trevelyan, I want that wagon brought up here as a barricade. See to it.” Knight-captain Roslinn’s voice cut through his reverie with the same snap and brought him back to the present. She had pulled off her helm and hood and her chestnut hair was trying to curl into waves on her head, even though it was short-cropped and plastered with sweat. She was standing beside the other statue that marked the end of the causeway and was gesturing with her long baton. Ruan followed where it pointed at a wagon on the edge of the dunes. He marched behind two templars up the sandy slope. The wagon was standing where the tough, wiry grass started to claim the sand as its own at the crest of the dune. Tents and makeshift shelters spread out amongst the dunes and the fields beyond. They huddled and pooled in the hollows between the dunes and spread out onto the fields beyond. A group of a eight people huddled around a small fire beside the wagon, at least four of them were children under ten. A hollow-eyed man stood up as he saw them approach. “We weren’t making any trouble. We want nothing to do with those fools. We were just here minding our own business, I swear it.”  
“We’re just here for the wagons.” said the templar beside Ruan.  
The man looked stricken. “My wagon? Why? It’s all I’ve got left.”  
“Requisition. It’s needed.” Ser Maes replied tersely  
“We can return it when this is over.” Ruan added, hastily. It was hard to look at the man. 

They dragged the wagon down to the threshold of the causeway. Ruan stepped back and watched the templars as they heaved it over onto its side. He winced at the sound of splintering and cracking wood as it crashed down. A second wagon had been fetched and that too was overturned to form a wooden wall between the two Havards. As the tide went out it would uncover the land between the coast and the Hermitage, but they all knew that they had no need to defend the wide sand flats. A number of people had already gone missing attempting to cross them, and Ruan himself had helped to fish a man out of the quicksands close to the causeway. 

They risked the dangerous sands in desperation to reach the supply of food from Ostwick that landed every other week on the island. When the so called ‘pilgrimage of mercy’ had first landed there had been no-one on this lonely stretch of coast except the sisters and the seals. Ruan had spent the first week riding out to nearby chantries, escorting wagon loads of food. Within a fortnight, however, the first refugees had started to arrive. A whole caravan of people had come bearing news of villages destroyed by the darkspawn in the South. The pilgrimage had been true to its name. It had fed and clothed them. They had offered to escort the frightened, hungry people to Highever. Then they were told that, in fact, these people had come from Highever and found the city gates closed against them. So they had given the refugees tents and told them that they could take shelter on the island after a period of time. They had to be certain that none of them carried the blight. Before that time had passed, however, another caravan had arrived, then another. Soon enough the trickle of people had become a flood. Many of them were fleeing civil war between men rather than the darkspawn. 

By the end of the second month the camp had swelled to the size of a small town and there was no way they could be accommodated on the tiny island. Cartloads of food wheeled across the causeway from the Hermitage were picked clean and still left people hungry. The stores on the island were emptied faster than the Ostwick ships could fill them. The first reduction in the rations created grumbling. The second had halved the ration still further, and that was when trouble began. The handful of sisters and templars handing out the meagre rations had been mobbed and forced to retreat across the causeway. The mob had followed them and it had taken the whole of the templar contingent to force them back. Now they were all stranded on the mainland with the tide still rising, and barely a third part of the day’s ration had been distributed. 

They laid out the unconscious rioters in the sand in front of the barricade and then hunkered down behind it. Ser Roslinn inspected their makeshift wall with a deep frown. “Tomorrow we must find enough timber to build a stockade here, otherwise they may be tempted to try again, especially when the ships return from Ostwick.” She muttered.  
“It’s been two weeks already. Perhaps they’re not coming back.” Ser Maes was grey haired and scarred. He wore an expression of determined resignation.  
“They’ll be back.” Ruan said with confidence.  
“It’ll be a drop in the ocean anyway. There’s no way that we can keep feeding this lot. If you ask me it’s time that they pulled us out. We’ve done our bit.”  
“Then what happens to these people?” Ruan replied.  
Maes shrugged. “It’s not our country, Trevelyan. Let the Fereldens feed them.”  
“With what? Half of Ferelden’s harvest must have been lost.” Ruan also thought about the stories of the darkspawn creeping Northwards, with nobody seeming prepared to fight them.  
“Maes might be right,” Ser Roslinn said quietly as she looked across the barricade at the camp, “We can’t keep this up for much longer, and we aren’t helping these people by keeping them here with promises we can’t deliver on. We’ve already done more than we set out to do.”  
“We can’t just sail away and leave them.” Ruan replied  
“You can follow the orders you are given, Brother.” Roslinn cut back, turning to fix him with a stare. “Like in the shieldwall. You were ordered to keep your shield high and overlapped and use your baton.”  
“I used my baton, and the shieldwall held.”  
“You broke the line and risked us all because you lacked the stomach to strike when and where it was needed. If you can’t do that you will not make a templar, and you will address me as Knight-captain when you speak to me, Brother.”  
Ruan’s face burned, but he bowed his head. “Yes, Knight-captain.”  
“The first watch is yours, Brother Trevelyan.” she jumped down from the barricade.  
“Yes, Knight-captain.” Ruan climbed up onto the underside of the capsized wagon and found a perch from where he could watch the camp. As the others began to light a fire he suddenly remembered the smoke he had seen on the horizon. He turned to the West and looked for it, but whatever it was had been burned away and there was no light to be seen. He wondered what had been lost to the flames.

It had been embroidered flames blazing on their sails when they had left Ostwick harbour on the morning after his vows. The tall ships had been magnificent with the sunburst of the Chantry above them and the cheers of the people of Ostwick behind them. All of them, Ruan included, had felt like heroes. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He pulled on the leather thong around his neck to pull the ivory horsehead ring from inside his breastplate. “I have made my choice.” he said to himself as he pressed it to his lips. He had to believe it. “I will wear it well.”


	3. The Weaver

“Study the image. Trace its every line. See every angle. Know each part and how it relates to all others.”

Even in her sleep, a year since she had seen or heard from Miranda, Isehris could hear the clipped tones and smoky gravitas of her instructor’s Nevarran accent. The voice brought to her mind the image of which it spoke. Always different, and yet always the same in is scheme. 

For days on end Miranda had made her and the other apprentices study the spiralling madala, and then recreate them from memory. At first they had traced it in sand with a wooden staff. At the slightest mistake Miranda would flick her hand, sending a gust of air to scatter the sand across training room floor, obliterating their work, no matter how far through the sequence they had been. Over and over again they had done it, until Isehris had been sobbing with frustration. After the first few days she had begun to dream of the spiralling shapes unfurling around her. That, she knew now, had been exactly what Miranda had wanted. Each day the pattern had been different, sometimes in ways so subtle that they had failed to see them until many failed attempts had been made. Miranda never pointed the differences out until they had noticed for themselves. 

Isehris had not mastered it as quickly as the others. One by one they had surpassed her and were sent to the upper floors. After a while she had protested by scratching out any old shape, deliberately making mistakes. Miranda had implacably wiped them all away without comment, only the same command every time: “Again.”

She had not even commented when Isehris had screamed obscenities at her and set her wooden staff alight. She had thrown it at the wall, just missing Miranda. The Nevarran warden hadn’t even flinched. She did not follow her when Isehris stormed from the room to the barracks. Isehris had stayed there and waited. No repercussions came, no admonitions, no punishment.

She had been left to her own devices with no new duties assigned. It was the first time that she could remember having so much free time. No-one even prevented her from eating in the mess hall. She spent days rattling around the fortress wondering what to do. Finally she had returned to Miranda’s training room. Two days afterwards she had completed the mandala for the first time. She had thought at the time that she was doing it out of spite. Yet when Miranda almost smiled at her work she had felt a surge of pride. Then Miranda wiped it all away and said, “Again.”  
Isehris had done it again. 

On the second floor the process had been the same, except they were blindfolded. Two of the seven candidates had been unable to complete this stage and had been reassigned. It had taken Isehris almost a month to complete it for the first time, and another two weeks to repeat it. The third and fourth had not taken so long. On the third floor they were given a staff tipped with lyrium and the sand was mixed with lyrium dust. Miranda had chanted under her breath while they drew the Weaving. The air had trembled and Isehris’ blood had sung in her veins. She always awoke at that part of the dream, exhausted and unsure whether she had been sleeping for minutes or for weeks.

The air in the warehouse, musty and muffled with the bales of wool, did not sing. She would be awake long enough to feel relief and regret, before her eyes closed again. Behind them Miranda was always waiting. Always she said the same thing: “Again.”

Sounds of dawn activity on the docks finally brought Isehris out of her restless sleep. She stretched out and sat, just listening to the life of the city that came muffled through the walls and the bales of wool. Her whole body ached as though she had been running for miles. Her eyes were sore and heavy. She reached for her pack and slowly took out every object inside, methodically laying them out in front of her. It was an old habit, one she had learned before the wardens; before Miranda. Back on the streets of Hasmal, whenever there had been a small window of saftey, she would always take stock of everything she had before packing it neatly away. Only then could she rest. Back then, this little woolen nest would have been a palace. 

The first, and last thing that she checked was her food stash. It didn’t take long. The journey to Highever had given few opportunities to replenish it. She made a breakfast of the two ships’ biscuit and the nub end of a cured sausage, and that was the end of it. Acquiring food would be her mission for today. She wrapped her belt, with its coin purse and knife around her waist, slung her satchel over her shoulder and then fastened her cloak. With her legs still folded underneath her, she took a deep breath and reached for her staff. It was the most beautiful, and valuable, object that Isehris had ever owned. Its tip was a roughly shaped piece of blood-red amber the size of her fist. The light glimmered and refracted on the myriad cracks and bubbles held inside it as she turned it. The stone was held between three flutes of volcanic aurum fashioned into the shape of eagle’s wings. They tapered down to the onyx shaft and spiraled around it down to its tip. There it had been moulded into a guard the shape of two griffons gripping a chalice between them. The blade itself was long and pointed. In the light it glowed with a bluish tinge, a sign of the lyrium infused into the steel. In that it was very like the marking rods she had used in training. Miranda herself had presented her with this staff. 

She climbed carefully down to the door of the warehouse. Then she halted abruptly when she saw the side door. It was standing ajar, sunlight and sounds leaking in from the outside world. Isehris tensed and gripped her staff. Its tip glowed as she reflexively fed it with mana. The shadows in the warehouse rippled and danced to the new light, and Isehris cast around, searching for movements or sounds inside. Only slowly did the lengthening quiet her nerves and she stalked towards the door. She checked the lock… but it wasn’t there. Then she saw the pile of rust and warped iron fragments on the ground. Dim memories of the night before came back and her head throbbed to recall them. “It’s getting worse.” she whispered to herself, then chided herself silently. Fears spoken aloud could become real.

She wanted nothing more than to curl up in her safe nest and go to sleep. Yet sleep offered little rest, and the nest didn’t feel so safe anymore. Her stomach rumbled. “Food. Go and get some food.” she said to herself. Her voice was firm, but when she took a step she stopped and looked uncertainly at her staff. She could feel the power humming within, reaching out to respond to her will. The blood amber glowed and the golden wings seemed to flutter as a heat haze rose around them. It felt good. Too good. Reluctantly, she turned and climbed back up to her nest and set the staff down. She rolled it up in its canvas and tucked it away between two bales of wool. “Back soon.” she muttered, and began the climb down a second time.

The narrow pathways between the warehouses were little used and overgrown with weeds. That was why she had chosen them. Carefully she crept to the end. She stopped at the corner just at the edge of the enveloping shadows and peered out onto the dock. Beyond was the light of the everyday; the sound of chattering voices and calling gulls the smell of sea air. Her hand flexed, longing for the grip of her staff. Her fingers fidgeted. She caught her index finger tracing the lines of her weaving in the air, and quickly clenched her fist.

Footsteps.   
Instinctively Isehris stepped back into the shadows against the wall. Someone walked past whistling a tune. She wore a long cloak against the Autumn winds and her hair was covered with a hood in the same way as Isehris’. She carried a basket to the fish stalls a few paces away. As she watched Isehris noticed with a jolt that the woman was an elf. Isehris gazed in frustration as she spoke to the fishmonger and handed over a few coins. She had no more protection than Isehris. Less, truly, for Isehris knew that she could turn the fishmonger into a human torch even without her staff. She had lived on city streets for most of her life, but always there had been something to cover her; darkness, a distraction, silent prayers to whichever spirits were listening, the badge of a grey warden. Now she felt naked. Yet this woman seemed at her ease.

Isehris, on the other hand, pressed herself against the warehouse wall. The stone was moist and cold against her palms. “There is nothing to fear.” She said to herself. It had been the same when Miranda had first taken her into the deep roads. Then she had been listening to the scrape of darkspawn tools on the stone and their distant song crawling in her mind. Then it had been Miranda telling her that there was nothing to fear. Then she had called the weaving that she had so long practiced. The darkspawn song had grown louder at first as she etched it out in her mind’s eye. Then it had been drowned out by choirs under her own command. Once it was complete she had felt the power humming in her staff. When she had stepped out to face the hurlock mob fear had been quite forgotten. Now, though, there was no music. Neither the sickly melody of the taint nor the symphony played on the strings of her own web. There was just the waves and a babble of voices. “There is nothing to fear.” She said again, and pushed herself out onto the street. 

As she moved she noticed a new ship in the harbour. Beside the five sleek, oar-driven warships lay a tall, big-bellied vessel with two masts. The quay was lined with soldiers in mail where the large ship was docked and Isehris had to fight the instinct to stop and walk the other way. That would have been a sure way to get them to notice her. As she got closer she could make out a man in a fur-lined robe speaking to two others, a man and a woman, in embroidered overcoats favoured by Marcher merchants. “They’re here for him. Not me. They aren’t interested in me.” Isehris said to herself silently. She kept moving, concentrating on not hurrying. She looked straight ahead. She kept her head down . She walked and found that no one cried out and no one gave chase.

Just past the soldiers she turned in through the harbour gates and walked past the tavern where she had met Reid. She kept going into town. A long straight road climbed the hill into the centre of Highever. There the looming towers of the castle reared up above the rooftops. There was also a trail of grey smoke rising into the sky ahead of her. 

She had to slow her pace and stopped as she neared the top of the hill. A crowd of people filled the street where it opened out into a square. Instead of flowing into the square, they were gathering around the bonfire that had been built at its mouth. She stopped a few paces away and watched for an opening through the throng.  
“Compliments of the weavers’ crafthouse.” a voice from behind her took her by surprise. She swung around. There she found a young man holding out a mug of ale to her.   
“Um… The what?” she replied, warily.  
“The crafthouse? Of the weavers of Highever?” he repeated, proffering the mug closer to her, making its contents slosh around. He touched his cap, made from cloth a distinctive shade of russet, as though that would explain everything to her. “The Arl is robbing us to stuff the pockets of Amaranthine wool merchants. We need you to support our protest.”  
Isehris pushed the urge to ask ‘Which Arl?’, shook her head and backed away, “No thank you.” she muttered and quickly stepped behind another human. She hunched her shoulders and lowered her head as she slipped into the crowd.   
“Keep to the busy places.” Runner Mauro had always told his ‘little rabbits’, “Busy humans don’t look for you in the crowd.” Yet there were humans here looking for her, looking for anyone that approached, in fact. They were all young men that wore the same cloth caps and offered mugs of ale to anyone and everyone that came near, ushering them towards the bonfire.

The golden flames outlined the shape of a man who was speaking to the crowd. His arms moved in wide, impassioned gestures and his words were shouted. His orange cloth cap had two long feathers in it. The ranks of older men standing around the bonfire also had feathers in their caps. One of them held a banner. It was the same burnt orange colour and stitched with the symbol of a rams head and a fleece. He seemed to use the words ‘thieves’, ‘tyrant’ and ‘usurper’ a lot, but Isehris did not try to make out the details of what he was saying. She was here to find food and then to return to her sanctuary. Curiosity about the troubles of the shemlen had no place in that. She kept her mind on Runner Mauro’s lessons. He had taught them to spot the attractions, and the distractions; the places that burned too bright for a quiet little girl to be noticed. This was certainly one of those. She stepped carefully, watching patiently for openings, and trickled through the crowd like water through the soil. 

Finally she found her way through the crowd and into the square, where she could move more freely. There the colourful ornings of market stalls formed a maze underneath the walls of a castle that she could lose herself in. Above loomed the old, cold stone of the castle, its gatehouse hung with a bear blazoned banner. If there were any soldiers watching the market from its arrow slits, they were not visible from the square. Yet no one had erected any stalls in the empty space before the closed gates, and no one approached. No one, except for one large wagon that rumbled through the market, pulled by two great cart horses. Five soldiers walked in front of the wagon, pushing aside people in its path with their shields and the shafts of their spears. They were all pressed into the sides of the lane together and Isehris’ whole body wound with tension as her back touched against the woman behind her. Her arms were held against her sides by the crowd. She made herself small and quiet. No one was looking at her, only at the big wagon, it's deep bed piled high with sacks. A man with heavy, brown stubble on heavy, tanned jowls sat at the reins. He had a long nose and hard eyes that looked obstinately ahead as though he might will the angry glares from the crowd out of existence. Beside him sat an elf with greying hair and a farm labourer’s smock. He looked like he wanted to fold into himself. Two more elves, younger, but wearing similar smocks and expressions of discomfort sat on top of the pile of sacks. Another five soldiers followed the wagon. The crowd closed behind them as they passed and Isehris was released from the press. She found her focus and quickly made use of the space to slip away. She spared a glance to watch the castle gates open up to swallow the wagon, before closing once again. 

Almost all of the people in the market were human, but there were a few elves. She gave them a wide berth. Here in the shemlen town they would be more watchful, and they would quickly notice a face unfamiliar to the alienage. She did watch for which stalls they visited, however, and made sure only to visit those herself. You could never be sure how strange shemlen might react to you, and she needed to avoid any confrontation. There were plenty of coins in her purse, but she made sure to pay only with coppers as she bought bread, oats, cured sausage and dried fruit. One stall holder, a bald man with dark skin and a running hound tattooed on his forearm, even bid her good day.   
“Good day to you too, Messere.” She replied.  
“I don’t think I’ve seen you before? New to the alienage?” He asked  
Isehris didn’t miss a beat, “Yes. My father brought us here from Denerim.” She replied, surprised at how quickly and naturally the story came.   
“Ah, well. Welcome to Highever.”   
“Thank you, Messere.” She smiled and felt an absurd thrill. 

She held her head a little higher and stepped more briskly between the milling people. There was pipe music playing from one side of the square, she realised, and she began to add more strings to her story as she drifted along, listening to it. Her name would be Henahriel, she decided, though everyone would call her Henna. Her father, Rindhelas, was a carpenter. He was very skilled and had rough hands that he patted her head with when she was a child. She had found a position as a maid in the house of a wool merchant. Henna was a good worker and kept all the secrets that her mistress’ daughter told her. The daughter was planning to elope with an unsuitable young man and Henna was trying to persuade her not to be so impetuous. Isehris smiled to herself as she wove her tapestry. 

A rich aroma drew her eyes to a fire pit where a man was cutting off slices of a roast hog while two boys that might have been his sons were packing them into oatcakes with apple sauce to sell to the passers by. Her stomach rumbled. “Being hungry makes you sharper.” Another of Mauro’s sayings. She had always hated that one. He only ever used it when he gave out meagre portions. She started making her way towards the hog roast. Maybe a maid, especially one as diligent as Henna, might have a silver or two to spend?

The oatcakes only cost a single silver, as it turned out, and she only drew the briefest of curious glances when she handed one over. She bit down into the oatcake and the apple sauce squeezed out over her chin. It tasted sweet and mingled with the rich meat so well that she almost bumped into a woman walking towards her as she savoured it. That would have earned her a beating, had Mauro been watching her; a memory that should have made her bitter. Yet somehow that thought only gave her a triumphant thrill. “You've done what you came to do. Time to go.” She said to herself, though it was Mauro’s voice that she heard. He wasn't here. In fact, he was most likely dead by now; perhaps in some gang war, or else dangled and dancing on a gibbet outside Hasmal’s gates. Isehris was here, alive and free, so she chose to be Henna for a little longer. She kept moving, gliding among the stalls and listening to the hubbub of voices as she let each morsel of her food melt in her mouth.

Time slipped by and the sun rose higher in the sky. Henna bought some cheese, oatcakes and salt fish and tucked them into her satchel. Her attention was drawn when the big wagon rolled past her again. This time it was empty of its load and only the head and shoulders of the two elf labourers could be seen above its side as they stood in its bed. No soldiers marched ahead to open the way for it. Isehris trailed along behind the wagon as it crawled and found herself glancing up at the thick black hair on the head of the boy leaning on the high back of the wagon, his arms spread out wide. His broad ears were only just showing underneath his curls and his long fingers were drumming out a beat on the wood as he whistled a tune. Perhaps he felt that he was being watched, because he turned to look over his shoulder, and broke into a smile as he saw her. “Hello. You’re new.” He said. He had bright blue eyes.  
Isehris’ smiled back. “So I am.”  
He turned around and rested his chin on his hands. “I’m Telhann.”  
“Hello Telhann.” Isehris replied.  
“...and you are?”  
“Late. You’re in my way.”   
Telhann pouted, “Oh. Now here I thought you were following me. What’s your name?”  
“Henna.” she answered with a half-smile, and decided that the freckles scattered across his nose were pretty. At the same time she noted the smoke of the bonfire just ahead of them. That marked her way home, away from the market; away from Henna. 

“Welcome to Highever, Henna.” Telhann said, and grinned. It was a bright, sunny thing. It drew her eye away from the flickering fire and rising smoke.  
“Thank you. I like it here, so far.”  
Telhann shrugged, “It’s okay, but what would I know? I’ve never been anywhere else. It seems prettier now you’re here.”   
Isehris… Henna cocked her head and her eyebrow at him, “Flattery will get you nowhere.” she said.   
“What if I try a lot of flattery?” asked Telhann, flashing another grin.  
She lifted her chin, but didn’t lose her half-smile, “Then you might get a lot of nowhere.”

If Telhann had a reply it was lost when the wagon lurched to a halt. The jolt set him swaying backwards and started a gust of foul language from the jowly shemlen driving the wagon.  
“He seems nice.” Isehris commented dryly.  
“Him?” Telhann sucked his teeth and jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the driver. “He’s a sour tempered old miser who waters down the ale he gives us. Still, he has to pay us a fair wage because none of the shemlen will work for him.”  
“How come?” Isehris asked  
“‘Cause he carts for the Howes. They've had us up and down the country gleaning the tribute due on the harvest. He's made a pretty penny but he's got about as many friends as my Nan has teeth, and they're just as rotten, too.” Telhann laughed, but Isehris felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. She was suddenly very aware of the angry, resentful eyes looking toward the wagon; towards her. This was just the kind of place that burned bright. It was just where she shouldn’t be. Yet here she was with her head bared and gossiping like a child. How could she be so careless? The wagon hadn’t started moving and she could hear more than one angry voice now. She realised that Telhann had been speaking and she hadn’t heard a word of what he had said. “I have to go.” She mumbled in his general direction and tried not to notice the way his face fell as she threw up her hood. Two deft strides and she slipped away into the crowd. 

She had to go back into the market for a few paces, then circled around the wagon. It wasn’t long before the press of people was too close, blocking her way through to the harbour. They were all looking at the wagon. The driver was standing on his step now, waving his arms and shouting even louder obscenities. Isehris could see the weavers’ banner waving and many russet cloth caps in the crowd. In desperation, she ducked under the orning of a wood-turner’s stall and jumped over his table of carved utensils. The woman gawped at her, though her foot kept working the pedal of her wood turner even as she held her chisel limp in her hands. “Sorry!” she called and quickly sidled along the narrow space left between the townhouses and the stalls. At the corner she had to push a man with white hair and a russet cloth cap out of the way to slip by. He turned angrily, but the crowd had already pressed in too close for him to catch her. 

Only once she was past the bonfire and the view of the sea opened up in front of her did she spare a glance back. The wagon driver was shouting. The crowd shouted back and the wagon was rocking back and forth as they pushed against its sides. Isehris kept resolutely moving towards the sea. “Don't look back.” She muttered, but her head turned anyway. A man wearing a russet weaver’s cap was climbing up onto the drivers step. The driver raised his crop and flailed at the invader, but the bigger man snatched it from the driver’s hand. Isehris turned and kept walking “None of your business.” She growled under her breath. She got four paces before she snarled under her breath and turned around a second time. There were three more men climbing aboard the wagon and the shouts were getting louder. She could hear at least one voice crying in pain. “Maker’s balls.” She cursed at creation in general. 

It was harder to climb back up the hill. Isehris had to push and wriggle between people who were turning towards the commotion and drifting towards it. That commotion was more than enough distraction, however, and she was able to maneuovre around behind the barrels and reach the bonfire. When finally stood, bathed in its heat, she closed her eyes and let her finger trace the shapes they wanted to. “I only need a small piece of the web, just for a few moments.” The Weaving came to her as she whispered this permission to herself. It took barely any effort to summon it, just a lowering of the thoughts she had raised to hold it back. She saw without her eyes as it spilled out into its shapes like the blood flowing through her veins. She shivered in excitement and tasted the tang of a rising storm. When she opened her eyes the shouting and wailing were fainter, but the scene was somehow more alive with colour. 

With a sense that was neither seeing or hearing, yet somehow both, she found the thread she wanted and tugged upon it with her will, releasing the spell that hung upon it. Her hand was wreathed in ice as she plunged it into the bonfire. Her fingers wrapped around a burning timber and it felt cool to the touch. She yanked it out of the fire and held it aloft. Heads turned, and she called upon the whispers. Their soft sibilance crept into the edges of her hearing and she planted a thought to give them shape. Soon she could make out the words: “I am one of you…” She walked forward, taking on the swagger of the crafthouse men. Confidence is a kind of magic, and she felt its thrill as they moved aside for her. Her lip quirked into a half smile as she risked making eye contact with one youth who was clapping and shouting beside the wagon. “Give me a boost.” She said, plainly. He took one look that glided past her to focus on the burning timber in her hands. A wolfish grin spread across his face and he shot a furtive look over his shoulder. “Do it quick. Guards’ll be here soon.” He urged her before cupping his hands to boost her up.

She landed in the bed of the rocking wagon and swayed, catching the edge to steady herself. A big, square jawed shemlen in a crafthouse cap had one of the elf labourers pinned up against the side with one hand. His other, raw-knuckled fist was drawn back. The left hand side of the elf’s face was a purple mess. Both of them stared at Isehris. She swung the timber to smack the shemlen hard in the face. The elf staggered as the man holding him fell backwards and Isehris steadied him with one hand. The human hit the floor with a loud thump. The other shems were looking at her now, in disbelief. Isehris could hear a hissing scream overlaying everything, losing coherence as the evidence of their eyes contradicted what her whispers told them. She tugged on the second thread of her Weaving and a burst of psychic energy rippled out from her. In an instant, the focus went out of the eyes of those around her. Their arms fell to their sides and they stared past her into space. The wagon stopped rocking and the voices of the crowd nearby fell eerily silent. 

Isehris dropped the burning timber onto the bed of the wagon and let go of the mana keeping the ice around her hand from melting. In a moment it had sloughed off into a puddle on the floor, hissing as it dripped onto the flames. She grabbed the elf and shook him. “Get out of here. Quickly!” she snapped. His brow attempted to furrow in confusion. “Now!” she screamed and pulled him around, pushing him up and over the edge of the wagon. He took five achingly slow seconds to come to his senses and take his own weight, scrambling up and over to drop onto the street. 

The whispers were hissing in her ear as she knelt to shake the second elf, who was sprawled on the bed of the wagon. It was the older man, his salt and pepper hair matted with blood. He let her drag him to his feet, but his knees immediately buckled under him and he crumpled to the floor. “Maker’s balls!” Isehris swore to herself, looking nervously towards the castle. A wedge of spear points was making its way towards them through the marketplace. Heads were turning. Fingers were pointing. She didn’t have much time. “Get up.” she hissed at the bleeding man and tugged on his smock. He just groaned and floundered underneath her. She winced and looked around her. The flames were starting to catch on the timbers of the wagon. She spotted Telhann pressed between two of the shemlen and slid over to him, careful not to touch the others. Telhann’s lip and nose were bleeding and one of his blue eyes was closed up by bruising, but the other blinked and came into focus as she shook him by the shoulder. He started, but nodded as she pressed her finger to her lips. “Help me with him.” she whispered and pointed at the older elf. Telhann moved quickly and nimbly through the dumb bodies and knelt. “Dad. We have to move.” he whispered. Between the two of them they lifted him up and got him on the side of the wagon. Telhann jumped over into the street and Isehris pushed the old man over for him to catch. Telhann looked around at the blank-eyed crowd and then back at Isehris with one wide eye before he turned and dragged his father way to the nearest alleyway.

Isehris was just about to swing herself over the side to follow when a strong hand clamped down on her ankle and yanked her back. The wind was driven out of her as she was dragged over the edge and her head hit the floor as she landed. Stars fell in front of her eyes as she gulped desperately for air. The big, square-jawed shemlen was standing over her as she rolled onto her back. He had lost his russet cap and his nose was smashed and bleeding. He was swaying. Isehris couldn’t tell whether that was because of the movement of the wagon, the blow to his head, or the blow to hers. She crawled backwards on her hands. He was saying something, but Isehris couldn’t hear his words. There were a million half heard words hissing in her ears, and her own thoughts were too scattered to give them shape. She saw, rather than felt, his foot connect with her side. Dully she imagined that the pain would come later.

“Speak aloud. Your senses. Your thoughts. Your words. They all give it shape.” Miranda said to her in Isehris’ own voice. She tried to speak, but it was too confusing to hear herself in the din. The shem lifted his leg to kick her again, but then he stopped and turned around. There was muffled shouting. Men in mail with spears were climbing over the edge of the wagon. Their shapes were bending as the flames rose higher. She could feel the heat of them on her skin. Then she had it. She had found her focus. She closed her eyes and let the sea of voices melt into a noise, and she found the slow cracking sound of the wood searing under the flames. Fire had always come easily to Isehris. Fire always felt real. She could feel it now, below her and all around her; a latent force sleeping in the wood, just now waking up. 

The square-jawed human was being thrown up against the side of the wagon by one of the soldiers. Another was pointing at her. She looked away from them and focused on a flame flickering near her face. It sent up a spark that floated away on the breeze, bright and beautiful and free. She let herself rise like a flame released from the dull fuel. She felt the winds of magic carry her, so much more tangible than gross flesh, mere steel, raw wood. They all became gossamer. She rushed through them all as though they were not there, racing on the wind.


	4. The Crossing

Ruan awoke from a dreamless sleep to stiff limbs and aching muscles, rose from his bunk and walked over to the thin window. The other seven knights of Ruan’s detail were still asleep in the makeshift barracks room. Their shift would not begin until mid morning. Today their duty would be to patrol the camp. It would have been a relief to the body after a day on construction, though more taxing on the mind. Ruan had little experience of digging ditches and felling wood, and he had been surprised at how satisfying it was. Certainly he preferred it to the circuitous trudge around the refugee camp where he became the faceless image of menace and, at times, protection. If the rest of his detail were lucky, their day in the camp would merely be one of interminable boredom, but only if they managed not to look too hard at the lives of those around them. He felt a pang of guilt that he was escaping from that for a while.

An adjoining room had become their armoury, and Ruan went there to put on his armour. This morning, however, he also put on the scarlet and blue tabard under his breastplate, and the sash around his waist; highly impractical if he had been patrolling the muddy camp, but essential for his role today. Once dressed, he made his way out into the morning sun. 

The Chantry complex was perched high on the peak of the rocky island and he had to the climb down along rough, spiralling stairs that had been cut from the natural stone. The hill was almost sheer on the seaward side and below him the waves were breaking over rocks dotted with the mottled shapes of basking seals. There was another cluster of buildings on the landward side of the island beside a walled harbour. It was low tide, and the harbour was just an expanse of brown sands and beached boats. 

Beside the harbour he found the stables. Tamsyn and Conrad were already waiting there for him. Conrad was dressed in a fine embroidered doublet bearing his family crest, a boar and crossed spears. Tamsyn, too, was in her full regalia. She looked Ruan over. “Well, you look almost presentable without the mud.” she commented, “Have you eaten anything this morning?” she asked. Ruan could hear their mother’s clip in her voice.   
“There wasn’t any time.” he replied.   
She pulled a bread roll from her surplice and threw it at him. He managed to catch it in front his face and bowed to her. “Thank you, Sister.”

The lay brothers who worked the stable were tacking six of the small, sturdy horses that belonged to the island community. Ser Roslinn was standing at the entrance to the stables, arms folded, watching them work with a sceptical frown. “You know horses, don’t you, Trevelyan? What do you make of these ponies?”  
Ruan walked closer and looked the little horses over. They had shaggy coats and short, strong legs, a breed much used by the hill farmers of Ferelden. They were a far cry from the elegant palfries and coursers bred on the Trevelyan estates, or the big Orlesian destriers prized by chevaliers. “They’re hobbies, yes?” he asked the stable hand, who nodded in reply. Ruan turned back to Roslinn. “They’re bred for stamina; don’t need a lot of feed; nimble tread; good on slopes and woods.”  
Ser Roslinn grunted in acknowledgement. “That’s something, I suppose. What about their speed?”  
“Out here?” Ruan replied, “We won’t need speed. Stick to rough country and we’ll outlast anyone on a big cavalry animal.”  
Ser Roslinn turned to face him for the first time and raised her eyebrow, “Still avoiding the inconvenient questions, Trevelyan?”

Ruan opened his mouth to reply, but before he could decide what to say she had turned away and strode over to Tamsyn. “Are you sure that you won’t allow me to bring a stronger escort along with us, Sister?”  
Tamsyn shook her head, “If it were up to me, Knight-Captain, I wouldn’t be taking the knights we already are, and I still think that you should stay.”  
“Ser Maes knows his duty, ma’am,” Ser Roslinn replied, implacable, “I have given instructions that he can draft more of the refugees for the construction work.”  
Tamsyn sighed, “Very well.” and walked over to a chestnut hobby and stroked her mane, “What’s her name?” she asked the stable hand.  
“That’s Moire, Sister.” he replied.  
“Moire…” Tamsyn said aloud. Ruan noted that she had gone straight to the tallest and strongest looking horse. She deftly swung herself up into the saddle and clicked her tongue, walking Moire out of the stables.

“I am aware that Fereldans are fond of dogs but I didn’t know that they rode them as well.” said Conrad as he looked Moire up and down. Ruan had been reminded of a few jokes he had heard during his time in Orlais, but he decided that it was best not to repeat them. 

“Don’t be so precious.” Tamsyn chided Conrad and stroked the mare’s neck, “Don’t listen to the bad man, darling… Come on, your lordship, you know better than to insult a lady before you take her out. You’re better at pretending to be charming than that.” Conrad gave her a sour look and Tamsyn smirked 

“With your permission, Ser Roslinn, I would like to ride up to the ridge while you wait for your knights. I shall take Brother Ruan as my escort.” She waited a heartbeat for Roslinn’s nod before she said “Come along, Brother.” and turned Moire to walk along the harbour walls. Hurriedly, Ruan mounted a dappled grey and got her name, Gwen, from the stable-hand, before riding off to catch up with his sister.

Twin obelisks marked where the harbour wall became the causeway extending out across the bay to the mainland. Each one was carved into abstract representations of Andraste. The causeway rose almost twenty feet above the mud flats and was more than wide enough for two horses to ride alongside each other. Even at low tide there was still some deep water at its foot in the middle stretch.   
“Do you and Conrad have to bicker all the time?” Ruan asked Tamsyn as Gwen trotted up alongside Moire.   
Tamsyn laughed “Oh, Ruan, that’s the basis of our entire relationship… Are you jealous? I will always make time to bicker with you too, little brother.”  
Ruan just shook his head. It was some time since he had seen her so relaxed and even longer since he had seen her on horseback. Perhaps that wasn’t a coincidence. 

They rode in comfortable silence as they approached the new stockade that had been built around the end of the causeway. The two obelisks of Havard had become posts for the gate. Beyond lay a path that led through the expanding camp and to low walls that had once fenced in sheep and goats belonging to the Hermitage. There the construction details were working with gangs of volunteers from the camp to dig a ditch and raise an earthwork wall around the camp’s perimeter. Past that lay a straight path which rose up to the wooded ridge above. 

Ruan watched the way Tamsyn sat with one hand on the reins and the other on her thigh, just like she had when they were children. “Be careful. You almost look like you remember how to ride.” he teased her.

Tamsyn did her best to look scandalised. “If I was only half the rider I was I would still be better than you, little brother.”

Ruan nodded at the hill. “Talk is cheap, Sister…”

“Don’t be absurd. I am the Revered Mother’s representative.”

Ruan shrugged, “Oh well, if you aren’t…”

Tamsyn had already spurred Moire into trot, and had her cantering before Ruan had followed suit. Soon they were both galloping and Ruan felt lighter than he could remember as he shortened his reins and lifted himself over the horse’s neck. Tamsyn, when she turned back to check if he was gaining on her, wore a wicked grin and a brow set in determination. She must have pulled off her cap and tucked it away. Tamsyn always thought of things like that. Her wimple had fallen back and some loose, russet locks were waving behind her. The line of trees drew closer, but there was only the rhythm of his mare’s gallop and the wind whipping past. In the end it was Tamsyn who reined in her horse at the ridge ahead of Ruan. 

“Mine, I think!” she cried and whooped as she tossed her cap into the air. Her grin was wide and her hair was wild as she caught it and looked at Ruan triumphantly. 

“You cheated,” he pointed out, mildly, with a wag of his finger.

“More fool you, little brother,” she said with a wink. It was the same wink she used to give him whenever she had tipped him into the pond in Mother’s garden. 

Conrad and the knights were still only halfway up to the ridge. Behind them the land rolled down to the sea. The cliffs arched away to the East and West to disappear into mist and sea-spray. They could almost have been back home, but for the Hermitage island standing in the bay and the makeshift village of tents and shelters clustered around its causeway. Ruan turned to look into the woods. The pines were close together and only a faint sun fought through the clouds and the boughs to light their way. These were not the well tended oak and ash woodlands where his father’s tenants took their swine and gathered their firewood. 

“I would feel better if we were taking more of the templars. I am not sure that just four of us are enough keep you safe.” he commented.

“Would you feel better if we had to reduce the patrols in the camp or the watch on the perimeter?” Tamsyn replied, “We will send more guards if the local lords agree to send grain.”

“Hmm… This was supposed to be about us sending food to Ferelden, not begging them for it.”

“And we have, but the Revered Mother’s message was clear that the last shipment would be the final one.”

“You did explain to her how many people we have to feed?”

“She knows. You have to understand what’s happening back home. We’ve bought up so much grain that the price of bread has almost doubled in the city. There were protests outside the cathedral.”

“Maker.” Ruan cursed, “You didn’t mention that.”  
“I was busy.” Tamsyn shrugged. It was true. Ruan had barely seen his sister in the last few weeks. Most of her time went into the mammoth task of administering the growing refugee colony and its dwindling supplies. From here the camp looked almost like a besieging army and it was becoming a little too easy to think of them in that way. “They’re here because of us, Tamsyn. We can’t just cut them off now.”

Tamsyn sighed and rubbed her temple, brushing her hand back to push her hair back under her hood.   
“Why do you think we are taking this journey?” she muttered. “The local lords will all have filled their granaries in the harvest.”

Ruan nodded, “Yes, what there was of it, and I’ll bet they squeezed all of their freemen to do it. They have an eye on the civil war. Do you really think you can persuade a lord who thinks he might be besieged to part with his stocks?”

“Oh, I suppose you have a better idea?” Tamsyn sounded testy as she put the cap back on her head. He should have known that her question was rhetorical. He answered anyway. 

“If the ships can’t bring food to the people they can take the people to the food. We should have started ferrying them across to Ostwick weeks ago.” Ruan thought aloud, speaking, at least in part, to himself. They would would be safe across the Waking Sea, at least for a time.

“No.” Tamsyn cut his thoughts off, quickly and firmly. 

“Why, in Andraste’s name, not? Jader and Kirkwall have already taken in thousands.”

“Because we’ve been told, ‘No’, that’s why. ‘No’ from the Teyrn; ‘No’ from the Revered Mother, and they’re right, Ruan.” Tamsyn scowled at the look Ruan gave her and her tone became angry, “Don’t look at me like that. If you want to do the one thing guaranteed to turn those protests into riots that would be it. These are our orders.”

Despite himself, Ruan couldn’t contain a derisive grunt. “Orders.” he repeated flatly, with disgust. 

“Yes orders!” Tamsyn snapped. “If we all did just as we pleased there would never have been any relief ships.”  
“Why are you so angry about this? I’m just looking for a solution.”  
“It isn’t your place to look for a solution, Brother.” Tamsyn’s voice took on a clipped tone. “You took vows to submit to the Maker’s will and the orders of your superiors.”

Ruan pointed down at the camp, “Those superiors, Sister, don’t see this. They don’t have to look into the faces of people who will starve when they order us to sail away. They'll just sit in Ostwick and soak up all the glory and congratulations for how generous they were for a while. Was that all that this was about?”

“Do you know how hard I have been working to keep them fed? We don’t get to make up our own rules.”

“This isn’t about rules, Tamsyn.”

“This is everything about rules and you need to learn to follow them just like I did.”

Ruan bristled and gripped his reins tight, beneath him Gwen whinnied and tossed her head, “I have been taking your orders. I took your damn vows!” 

Tamsyn laughed, mirthlessly, “My orders? My vows? I am so sorry that doing something that was expected of you makes you so miserable, Ruan, clearly it is all my doing.”

“That isn’t what I meant.” Ruan replied quietly, and then wondered whether that was true. It certainly wasn’t fair, even if he had meant it. 

She barely paused, raising her voice over him, “This life clearly isn’t good enough for you, is it? Unlike us poor mortals who have been doing it for years.” 

“Fine words, coming from someone who almost eloped to get out of taking your vows.”

Tamsyn flushed red, “I didn’t!”

“No, you didn’t, and when are you going to stop resenting me for your mistake!” Ruan shouted. This time he instantly wished he could call the words back. Tamsyn looked at him, wide-eyed, then looked away without saying a word.

The two of them sat in silence as Conrad, Ser Roslinn and two other knights walked their mounts up the hill. As he crested the ridge, Conrad looked from Tamsyn to Ruan and back again, and raised an eyebrow. He opened his mouth to speak.

“Shut up, Conrad.” Tamsyn snapped and turned her mount to ride away. Conrad’s eyebrow lifted higher up his forehead. Ruan gave a bitter sigh and a shrug. “She’s probably right” he said.

Conrad tutted. “Your family is going to be the death of me.”

“Be careful what you wish for.” Ruan replied, and followed his sister.

By the time that the sun had passed its high point they had still not reached Dun Mair. “You’ve got us lost.” Conrad observed dryly as they looked out across the lip of a steep slope that disappeared into the muddy torrent of a river swollen by the autumn rains. 

“I did not get us lost,” Tamsyn hissed through her teeth, “Did you use your amazing skills of observation to spot any turns in the road that the rest of us missed?”

“Well we aren’t going any further this way.” Conrad gestured at the river as though Tamsyn might have missed that too. Ruan ignored them and dismounted, walking to the edge of the low ravine. The waters were about fifteen feet below, but he could see wooden beams protruding from the surface. Downriver, where the river meandered, a tangle of timbers was partly damming the flow. Water was bashing and breaking around it. “We aren’t lost. There’s the bridge.” he pointed to the mess of broken wood.   
Conrad and Roslinn spurred their horses closer. Conrad’s eyes widened as he spotted the wreckage. “Maker’s Breath! I didn’t think that the storms were that bad.”

“They weren’t. Someone cut it.” Ser Roslinn pointed down at the beams below and the jagged axe-cuts where the supports had been severed.   
Ruan looked back to Tamsyn. “Perhaps we should return to the Hermitage and set out tomorrow with a larger party?”  
Tamsyn’s lips pinched, “You’re many things, Brother, but I didn’t take you for a coward.”

Ruan ground his teeth, “And I didn’t take you for a fool, Sister. We cannot guarantee your safety and we cannot afford to lose you and Conrad.”

She ignored him, casting her eyes around the landscape to the South. “We head upriver. We can find a place to ford.”

Ser Roslinn spoke up then, “Sister, somebody cut this bridge for a reason. There could…” 

Tamsyn cut her off, abruptly intoning, “Though all before me is shadow, yet shall the Maker be my guide... Come along.” she clicked her tongue to urge Moire on and turned her off the road to the South without waiting for the others. Conrad shrugged and followed after her. Reluctantly, Ruan mounted his hobby and did the same.

The going was slow as they picked their way along overgrown hunters’ trails on the forested hillsides to the South, riding nose to tail as the trees hemmed them in. They climbed up and around the flanks of a hill with a jutting, rocky outcrop at its crown and then descended again alongside a small stream that tumbled down the hillside to join the same river they were trying to cross. At least three hours had been added to their journey when they found the river again. Here, higher in its course, it was not so wide nor as deep. What might even be described as a path ran through it and the low banks were marked with hoofprints. 

Ruan and Gwen had found a comfortable rhythm together on the trek over the hills and set the pace at the head of the line. The others were some yards behind him as he urged Gwen in. The silty brown water was still high enough to reach Ruan’s knee. He could feel the pressure of the current on Gwen’s flank as it swirled and eddied around them. He soothed her with a stroke on the neck as she searched for secure footing on the rocky riverbed. Several times something slipped under her hooves and Ruan tensed and leaned to help her keep her balance. 

It was only when he was in the middle of the stream that he spotted the fence of stakes surrounding the ford on the other side. He drew his sword, gripped the horse’s flanks more tightly with his thighs and tried to put the thought of sinking to the bottom in his heavy armour out of his head as he unslung his shield. The ground on the bank was a churned mess, but numerous, deep hoofprints could be seen in the mud. Here and there the fletchings of arrows stood out against the earth. He scanned the treeline as he approached, guiding Gwen with his legs as she waded through the boggy ground. Yet he saw no movement. Then he looked down and saw the first of the bodies. She lay on her back not five paces from him. Her armour was fine plate and chain, but splattered mud had covered its sheen. Nerveless fingers lay on the hilt of a sword half-sunk into the mire and her eyes were wide open, staring through Ruan at the ashen sky. She looked no older than he was. The lance-tip that had killed her was still lodged in her throat. 

“Maker!” Tamsyn gasped, letting him know that she had seen her too. Her face was almost as grey as the dead woman who stared up at them. When he looked up Ruan could now see the others. They were mottled with mud in just the same way, so that they had appeared like rocks or fallen branches before. Now they seemed to multiply as he looked around; perhaps a dozen or more. “If these are the people who cut the bridge it doesn’t look like they succeeded in stopping someone crossing.” he muttered. 

“We should do something for them. Build a pyre.” Tamsyn’s voice sounded far away.

“They haven’t lain here long. This fight was fought today. It would take us all day to gather enough wood for this many.”

“Brother Ruan is right, Sister. We should keep moving.” Ser Roslinn also had her sword and shield in her hands as her hobby walked up beside them.

Tamsyn looked back at them in horror. “We can’t. We can at least give them some dignity.”

“It isn’t safe here.” Ruan replied. He didn’t think that dignity would mean much to these people any longer.

“It isn’t safe anywhere.” The steel in Tamsyn’s voice was back, “You ride on if you want. I am staying.” At that she dismounted to land with a squelch in the mud. She waded determinedly over to the dead woman and leaned down to grab her shoulders. She heaved to no effect and then fell backwards to land on her arse. Watching, Ruan found himself looking down into the eyes of the dead woman again. He shared a wordless look with Roslinn and, with a sigh, he jumped down into the mud. It took some effort to lift the fallen knight. Her head fell back onto his shoulder, still looking up at the sky indifferently. 

“Bring her sword,” he grunted at Tamsyn as he dragged her out of the mire and laid her on firmer ground where the grass still grew. He closed her eyes, laid her sword on her chest and folded her arms over it. Then he stepped back and looked at her. Sometimes people said that the dead look as though they are sleeping. He decided that they were liars or fools; or both.

“What in the Maker’s name are you two doing?” Conrad asked as he joined them on the bank. They both ignored him as they went to pick up another body. “We have to keep moving!” he protested, and they still ignored him.

“This will go faster if you help.” Tamsyn said through gritted teeth and effort.

Conrad stared and shook his head. “Maker save us from Trevelyans.” he muttered as he dismounted.

Ser Roslinn and the other templars sat in their saddles watching the forest edge for several minutes. Then she ordered them to dismount. It was not a sign of ease, Ruan realised. Templars were not trained to fight on horseback. The six hobbies found their way over to the grass and nibbled at it where they could, though the green patch was quickly filled by the bodies dragged out of the mud. Apart from the knight, each of them wore similar half helms and padded gambesons that might once have been green. There was no insignia, but each of them had the same patch on their chest where something had been torn off. There were thirteen in all. The three of them stood awkwardly by the rows of bodies as Tamsyn chanted… 

“The Light shall lead her safely  
Through the paths of this world, and into the next.  
For she who trusts in the Maker, fire is her water.  
As the moth sees light and goes toward flame,  
She should see fire and go towards Light.  
The Veil holds no uncertainty for her,  
And she will know no fear of death, for the Maker  
Shall be her beacon and her shield, her foundation and her sword.”

Ruan, somehow, was always surprised by the soft, melodious tone his sister’s voice took on when she sang. Something in him felt a little lighter. He looked at the face of the fallen knight. Her chin was resting on the lance tip that had ended her. Ruan tried to think of her cleansed by fire, taken into the Maker’s light. All that would come were thoughts of the scavengers that would come for her when they left. Perhaps it was the trying that really mattered. Perhaps, with time, he could make himself believe at least that.

“You’ve got a fine voice, Sister.” The words broke the quiet peace. All three of them span around to face it. A line of soldiers suddenly appeared out of the treeline. The templars lifted their shields and moved in closer together. “Whoa there…” said the same voice, “No need for this to get out of hand.” More figures appeared from the shadows. Ruan counted at least a dozen. Four carried bows, each with arrows notched and pulled. They all wore the same drab-green gambesons and half helms as the dead. The one who had spoken, a young man with a wispy brown beard, spoke again. “It’s a good thing that you did here, Sister. But you should have listened to your man and ridden on when you had the chance.”

Ruan’s hand moved to his sword hilt, “Don’t” snapped the soldier. “It would be a shame to spoil such fine looking armour.” Ruan froze still as one of the archers trained their bow at him, but noted that each of the archers had no more than two or three arrows in their quivers. 

“We are templars on Chantry business. Stand aside.” Ser Roslinn growled at them.

“I can see that.” replied the wispy-bearded soldier. “The question is what business you have on my road?”

“Road?” Tamsyn looked around at the muddy track, “Is that what it is?”

The soldier scowled at her. “And who might you be?”

Tamsyn answered without missing a beat. “I am Sister Tamsyn, representative of the Revered Mother of Ostwick. This is my jester.” she indicated Conrad, who gave her a quizzical look. 

“That’s Bann Evenrig to you, representative of the Teyrn of Ostwick, and I only jest in my spare time.” 

“You have a lot of spare time.” Tamsyn said quickly.

“Ostwick?” said the soldier, “You’re a long way from home. Did you get lost?”

“That’s what I said,” Conrad replied. “Until we happened upon your fine road, that is.”

“Whatever they’re doing here they sound like the kind of fine folk people pay ransoms for.” growled another of the soldiers.

Tamsyn calmly took Moire’s reins, “Perhaps I am, but I’m not sure there’s anyone who would pay to get these two reprobates back.” She deftly put her foot in the stirrup and swung herself into the saddle.

“You! Stop that! Get down!” Barked the soldier. Ruan gripped his sword hilt tight and flicked his eyes quickly between the three archers. Each of them were sending uncertain looks to each other, wavering their sights between Tamsyn, Ruan, Conrad and the templars.

“No I don’t think I shall. I am far too busy to be held for ransom right now. So, kindly get out of my way or get on and shoot me.”

“Maker’s Balls, woman, what are you doing!?” Conrad hissed.

“My job, Conrad, you should try it sometime.” Tamsyn replied.

“GET DOWN!” roared the somewhat bearded soldier. This time Tamsyn replied by knocking her heels to Moire’s flanks. The hobby sprang forward at the soldiers. All three loosed their arrows. One panicked and let fly wildly over Tamsyn’s head as she leaned into the gallop. A second fired straight into Roslinn’s shield and the third wavered long enough between Tamsyn and Ruan before firing for Ruan throw himself to the ground as the arrow whistled over him. 

When he looked up, Ruan saw it. It was plain in their faces. These were defeated men. They had been ridden down by cavalry and had been lucky to live. Even a single chantry sister on a horse had spooked them. Tamsyn was already galloping away down the path as their would-be captors tried to decide who to focus on. He used those moments to jump up, shove his foot in the stirrup and heave himself into Gwen’s saddle. 

A moment later his sword was unsheathed, his shield in his hand. “Get a move on Conrad!” he roared and urged his horse headlong at the soldier with the thin beard, his sword levelled. The horse rushed between the templars. The bearded soldier tumbled onto his back as the hobby reared over him, scrambling back from the stamping hooves. 

Out of the corner of his eye he saw an archer nocking an arrow. He turned turned Gwen’s head around to face them and urged her at him. The arrow flew and Ruan caught it on his shield. Then he leaned to turn the horse in a circle, sending the soldier staggering as her flank bashed against them. He brought his pommel down onto their helmet to help them down to the ground. Someone rushed his exposed right flank with a spear levelled. Ruan tried to twist his blade around to parry, too slow. The spear point glinted within inches of the Gwen’s ribs before Roslinn bashed it down into the earth with her shield and drove her sword into the man’s throat.

“To the horses!” Ruan bellowed as he turned from side to side, looking for new threats. Finally Conrad had stopped standing and staring and was mounting his horse. Ruan rushed at another archer. Again they panicked and fired wild. Then he turned again, only quick enough to see a third bow levelled at him. He braced, waiting for it to fly. Then he heard the hammer of hooves and a galloping horse streaked past the archer. Tamsyn swung a big tree branch as she passed, sending the archer flying. The horse leapt over the bearded soldier, who collapsed onto his back again. Pulling back on the reins she brought Moire to a stop and expertly turned her again. 

“Mount!” Ruan called again at the templars as the scattered soldiers circled warily around them. All but the one that Roslinn had stabbed. He was bleeding away more life into the mud. “They aren’t mages. On your horses. They won’t stand!” He and Tamsyn charged at them once more, scattering them, and the templars finally ran for their hobbies. They urged their horses on into a gallop away from the ford. Ruan looked over his shoulder as one final arrow flew after them and lodged into a tree. Somewhere behind him came the long, loud note of a horn. The sound reverberated in the forest around them.

They pushed the tired horses at a gallop until the ford was well out of sight, then slowed to a walk. Tamsyn, her robes still soiled with blood and muck, had the same wild, windswept look Ruan had seen in her after their morning race. “A little warning might not have gone amiss.” Conrad said as he finally looked back over his shoulder, and then at Tamsyn. Yet he too had a wide grin on his face. 

“What? I seem to remember that you used to like surprises, Bann Evenrig. I also remember that you weren’t always so slow witted.” Tamsyn teased.  
Conrad lifted his eyebrow, but kept his smile. “Out of practise, I suppose.”  
The two of them shared a half-smiling look for a moment , both seeming as though they were about to say something. The moment came and it went, and neither of them spoke. Suddenly the quiet seemed uncomfortable.   
“We shouldn’t linger long.” Roslinn said, scanning the forest for signs of movement “That horn means they have friends out here somewhere.”   
Ruan pushing Gwen into a trot, ahead of the others. “Stay together.” he called back to them.

The light was failing and the shadows in the forest lengthened. The weak sun glowed behind a grey autumn sky just above the horizon and cast strange shapes as the trees passed across it. Ruan rode ahead, sat high in the saddle with his sword drawn, peering into the forest as he let Gwen guide them along the path. Each flicker set his nerves jangling as he strained to separate false threats from real. A part of him began to enjoy the heightened sensation. He found his breath, measured it to the rhythm of Gwen’s trot and let the blood course through him; poised, tense and ready. These hills were not so different from those around his father’s house. Ruan could almost hear his voice behind him calling to the hounds at hunt. 

A movement in the trees ahead. His eyes narrowed. A man, not a deer. More than one. Moving down the hill to the path ahead of them. Ruan’s sword lifted. “There! Go! Ride!” he waved the others ahead of him and pulled on the reins to urge Gwen off the path, into the trees, up the slope. He held his knees in tight and leaned in as she climbed, glancing behind him as Tamsyn, Conrad and the templars started to race down the track. They were going to converge with the bandits. He could see them dashing between the trees, but now he had the high ground. “Come on, girl. Go!” he called to Gwen and her deft little legs began to race, weaving through the trees. He quickened his breath and stayed low as the branches whipped past. 

The nearest man turned, too late, as they were upon him. He shouted an obscenity and fell backwards down the slope. Gwen sped past him and kept going. The shout had got the attention of the men in front of him and they turned away from their pursuit as Tamsyn and Conrad galloped past on the track ahead. Most of the bandits scattered before the charge. One had the presence of mind to go down on one knee and brace his spear. Ruan pulled back on the reins and Gwen skidded to a halt feet away. Around them the bandits were finding their feet. There were moments before they were surrounded. 

Ruan squeezed in his knees and Gwen leapt forward into a canter and then a gallop, streaking through a gap in their line. He found his position in the saddle again and leaned forward as Gwen kept going down the slope. There was a short whistle and and thump against his back. The sudden knowledge that he had been hit with an arrow made his stomach flutter, even though it seemed not to have penetrated his armour. He could see the track and five horses, far below him and twisting away. Ahead, the slope plunged down into a gully. Just as the instinct to rein in became overwhelming another arrow whistled past him. He cried aloud and pushed on. Gwen leapt over the edge and Ruan threw his body back. For an instant he was weightless and he heard himself laughing. They landed with a jolt and time began again. They burst through branches like they were matchwood and Ruan held on for dear life, twisting and leaning on pure instinct, one arm held high behind him. His blood surged in him as Gwen leapt over a fallen log and landed, throwing him forward. The air was pushed out of his body as he braced himself on her neck. Then he lost himself in the pounding of her hooves, the gushing of her long breaths and his own laughter as the foot of the gully raced up towards them.

He was still panting with laughter as Gwen skidded to a stop in the waters of the brook running down the gully. Ruan patted her flank and looked back up the slope, the lip of it towering high above. “I think I’m in love,” he told her. He reached around his back and found the arrow hanging from a tear in his tabard. He pulled it free and tossed it aside. “Let’s find the others shall we?” They calmly climbed up from the gully onto the path to watch Tamsyn and Conrad cantering towards them. He greeted them with a grin that spread from one ear to the other. “What took you so long?”


End file.
